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NYPD dispersing physique cameras amidst police brutality uproar

New York Metropolis’s brass hasn’t absolutely dedicated to tricking out its almost 35,000 individual police pressure with physique cameras but, however Mayor Invoice DiBlasio is keen to offer them a shot. That is why the NYPD is testing the waters with a pilot program that’ll see choose officers from six instructions all through the town go about their day by day duties whereas sporting matchbook-sized cameras on their chests. Based on the New York Occasions, that first batch of fifty four digital camera-outfitted cops could possibly be on the streets in sure sections of the town as early this weekend.

Mayor DiBlasio hopes that strapping cameras to cops’ chests will enhance accountability and assist ease tensions between metropolis residents and the cops charged with defending them. Whether or not they truly assistance is one other situation totally. The announcement could be welcome information for those who assume daylight is the perfect disinfectant, however nonetheless others are involved (and maybe rightfully so) that not even exhausting video proof is sufficient to condemn cops once they act inappropriately.

Working example: a Staten Island grand jury earlier as we speak declined to indict Daniel Pantaleo, an NYPD officer who was caught on video ensnaring forty three yr previous Eric Garner in what seemed to be a chokehold earlier than different officers helped subdue him. All the ordeal lasted just some minutes, and by the top of it Garner was pronounced lifeless. That the entire thing was caught on video is par for the course nowadays — wouldn’t it actually make a distinction if the officers concerned have been sporting cameras as an alternative of being filmed by exterior ones? In some instances, positive. However there is a rising variety of individuals (particularly on Twitter) who do not assume a push for extra tech-laden cops will change the actual, essential underlying issues residents throughout the nation face.

Physique cameras for the American police won’t cease them from murdering individuals of shade. Surveillance absent of justice will not finish racism.